


on the edge of everything we’ve ever known (tonight don’t leave me alone)

by daisyjohnson, jemmasimmns (laurellance)



Series: teen wolf fics [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Endgame Stalia, F/M, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 23:57:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13064871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisyjohnson/pseuds/daisyjohnson, https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurellance/pseuds/jemmasimmns
Summary: Falling in love is slow. Falling in love is hard. It is waking up and realizing that you cannot live without someone, it is standing in the dark realizing that where you want to be is by their side. It is the longings of someone you don’t have, it is the lingering glances of a love long gone.And yet, love lives on, an invisible thread continuing from moment to moment, a constant in everyday life.(Or: Stiles misses Malia and how he wins her back.)





	on the edge of everything we’ve ever known (tonight don’t leave me alone)

 

Falling in love is slow. Falling in love is hard. It is waking up and realizing that you cannot live without someone, it is standing in the dark realizing that where you want to be is by their side. It is the longings of someone you don’t have, it is the lingering glances of a love long gone.

And yet, love lives on, an invisible thread continuing from moment to moment, a constant in everyday life. 

(Or: Stiles misses Malia and how he wins her back.)

* * *

 

Stiles fell in love a thunder storm: unpredictable, beautiful and deadly. Bold, brave and loyal with a heart that yearned for wild things. He falls in love slowly, unaware he has fallen for Malia until it’s too late.

It’s weird. He had been with Lydia just earlier that day in a cafe and all he could think about was that Lydia didn’t look quite right. It wasn’t the hair or the clothes, or the make up or the bag. Something was _off_ and he didn’t know what. It was on the tip of his tongue, the one thing he couldn’t quite place.

The hair hadn’t been brown enough. The speech and mannerisms weren't quite right, like the reflection off a old mirror. The gestures were too eloquent all of a sudden. 

Stiles gets through the lunch but he can’t stop thinking about it. It rests in the back of his mind, a nagging, a calling that refuses to leave him. Somewhere along that line, it starts affecting his sleep.

* * *

 

That night he dreams. It’s a turbulent dream where’s he trapped in the old abandoned train station and no one’s here to help him. Beacon Hills is a ghost town with no residents, and he watches in terror as everyone gets taken away. 

He wakes up in cold sweat, almost grasping for air as he struggles to breathe. It’s not real, he keeps telling himself, it’s just a nightmare. The worst is over. 

He checks the time. It’s 2 o’clock in the morning and he stares into the darkness, daring it to speak. Daring it to do _something_ , to tell him why he has to dream nightmares he can’t stop thinking about. 

He doesn’t get an answer. 

* * *

 

One night, Donovan kills Malia. All he can do kneel by Malia’s body and watch the ugly metal protrude through her body and weep, weep because Donovan has killed the girl he loved, the person he had let the nogitsune in for. He weeps in part for regrets, for the loss of her life.

It takes him a while to shake that off, and so he stares into the darkness once again, daring it to tell him the truth. Daring it to tell answer his question: why is this happening to him?

He still can’t find an answer to that question.

* * *

 

Weeks later, he dreams of Malia. They’re in a meadow somewhere, and he and Malia are running through the knee high grass. They’re both laughing in the end, as Malia shouts at him: “Catch up, Stiles!” 

It’s almost dreamlike. Everything was calm, everything was at peace. There was a picnic basket packed off to the side, bordering the forest next to it. The trees rusted as animals moved around the shrubbery and squirrels jumped among the branches carrying acorns. 

For the first time in a long time, he feels happy. Nothing against Lydia, he loved dating her, but he and Malia flowed better. He missed the connection they had, the way she would kiss him, the way she would at him with all of her being, the way she would spoon him as they slept. He missed that desperately, craving more than anything at that moment Malia sleeping next to him.

* * *

 

The dreams continue, one after another, the constant tumbling of a never ending cycle of terrors. It’s old foes long dead, Derek killing him, it’s new foes he didn’t think possible, and sometimes it’s his pack leaving him alone. Scott and the gang turn their back on him and the nogitsune whispers in his ear, _let me in, let me in_. His heart races, rapidly, the thumping inside his chest increasing as if he were caught in an inferno with no escape route possible. 

Stiles had only let the nogitsune in so Malia wouldn’t be hurt. They’d had sex the previous night, sex Stiles had most definitely enjoyed, and he had grown attached to her. She had helped him when she didn’t have to, when she had all the reason why _not_ to, and here they were, having sex in the basement of Echo House. Not bad for a first time for either of them, but not a story he could tell his dad without switching out a majority of the details.

He reflects back that that was the first time he started to grow attached to Malia. She was nothing if not loyal, and he was the first person she had connected to in a very long time. Her love was an all consuming one: it was one of clear love and devotion, with a promise of always, and he misses that. He misses the way Malia would love him, and he finds himself missing her. She had always made him happy and he had realized that too late.

* * *

 

His ghosts don’t leave him. Stiles knows this, as sure as he knows himself. They haunt him, just waiting for him to make a mistake so they prey on it like beasts, consuming is nights with terrors of old and new. His regrets haunt his every word, his past a reminder of everything he has gone through.

But if you’re going through hell, you might as well keep going, because there’s no way back.

* * *

He poses a hypothetical question to Scott that same day. Changes the name, because he thinks Scott and Malia are still dating, but poses the scenario. Man has a girlfriend. He, however, dreams of him and his ex-girlfriend being together and finds himself missing the ex-girlfriend even though he’s perfectly happy dating his current girlfriend.

Scott’s answer? Man loves his ex-girlfriend and misses her. 

He asks Scott about him and Malia. Poses it as a side remark, a stray comment. Scott replies that he and Malia had decided to take a break for the time being. Something about Malia wanting a change. Stiles sends his condolences, when in reality he finds himself not at all sad about their break up.

He takes Lydia out to dinner that day, and when the conversation shifts to their friends from Beacon Hills, she started talking about going a seminar about the police and racial justice with Parrish. It had been enlightening, she had said, and not for the reason that the person she took with her was a member of the Beacon Hills Police Department. Though, she notes with flushed cheeks, Jordan did look quite nice in a suit.

* * *

 

That same week, Lydia calls him. Sits him down at their favorite cafe and tells him that perhaps, they should take a break. They were growing apart, she said, and she didn’t want to stay in a relationship where she wasn’t totally content. She tells him that during that seminar she had taken with Parrish, she had found herself laughing more than she had done in all the time she had been dating him. They had talked about Allison and all the people they’d lost, she reminisces, and Stiles realizes that she looked so _happy_ talking about her and Parrish.

It’s good for both of us, she tells him, and that is that. She apologizes, then leaves, her coffee untouched. He sits there awkwardly until one of the waitresses gives him a sympathetic look and takes the drinks away.

* * *

 

He calls Scott that night, and tells him that Lydia broke up with him. Their discussion turns to their ex-girlfriends, with Scott talking about how he had loved Allison, how he had missed Kira, how in all of that, he found himself glad to be single for the time being. It’s refreshing, Scott admits, but he finds himself lonely at times. Like a part of him wasn’t complete and he didn't know how to fill it. But it was also fulfilling, like Scott was finding a part go himself as well. 

The call lasts an hour, and Stiles finds himself looking at Malia’s contact information on his phone. He’s temped to call Malia, to check up on her. He doesn’t because there are a million reasons why it’s a bad idea and yet, calling her would have felt right if just to hear her voice once again.

* * *

 

As time goes on, he finds himself missing the small things. He way Malia would dress, often taking his shirts instead of getting her own, and she’d smell like him, or he’d smell like her. He misses the way Malia was fearless, how she would carry herself with the confidence that came with going through hell and walking out of it a survivor. He misses the way she would seek to protect him, the way she would make blunt comments others would have been mortified by, but the kind of comment he always loved. She was honest, noble and above all, beautiful.

It’s around this time he starts to figure out he loved Malia, deeply, the way only a soulmate could. The cravings of a special sort of company, being intimately familiar with someone and knowing them better he knew himself. He wants to wake up to find her as his forever girl, the one person who he knew would always support him no matter what.

He loves Malia Tate with everything in him and that is a definite truth.

* * *

 

He dreams of Malia, beautiful, wild and feral, in his arms once more and when he wakes up, he turns to the left of his bed and finds nothing. The empty pillow should have been hot with heat but remains cold to his touch.

He never should have let Malia go, and now the only thing he can do is win her back.

* * *

 

He debates calling her up, telling her over text. But Malia deserved better than that, she was worth more than texts and phone calls. She was worth the universe and everything within it, every piece of gold in the world combined, every single diamond, every single love confession and love letter, every vow of marriage and obituary. She was everything to him, the girl he had given his heart to for good.

And so he calls her, and asks if she’d like to drop by, to drive up. He wanted to talk to her in person, he tells her, and because he misses seeing her. The last part is, of course, omitted.

* * *

 

She drives a week later and parks next to his jeep. The parking lot was usually half empty depending on the day, and so the spots were scattered around. And in spite of that, she had chosen the parking spot next to his jeep. Stiles was probably overanalyzing this as he paced from his living room, looking out the window every so often. 

He had spent the week half working, half wondering. What would Malia be like? What would her hair look like? Would she be wearing a flannel? He absentmindedly runs his hand through his already messy hair. 

He had written down what he wanted to say too many times to count, only to find that upon rereading it he hated what it said. The trash bin in his bedroom was testament to that, overfilling with discarded love confessions. 

By the time she makes it up the stairs, he’s relatively less stressed. But his heart beats thump thump thump at a rate faster than it usually did. 

“Hey Stiles, are you okay? You’re anxious.” Malia tells him this frankly, and Stiles realizes now how much he had missed seeing her in person. She was wearing shorts and a flannel, and her hair had been cut shorter. 

“Yeah, fine. Work stuff.” He brushes it off, well aware Malia would’ve caught the lie.

Malia gives him the stink eye and asks if there were any good restaurants around her. She sniffs him on the shoulder when she thinks he isn’t aware. 

Stiles enjoyed the sniff on the shoulder.

* * *

 

They end up going to a local diner. They were in Stiles’s car and along the side of the road when Malia points to the restaurant on his right, the one with the neon sign ‘THE DINER’. It’s a homely little place, quiet and quaint. The owners of the place are an older couple who were graying. The wife, leads them to a corner booth and asks them what they would like to drink. 

Malia orders them two waters and they look at their menu. The restaurant wasn’t that fill itself, but a majority of the booths filled were along one wall, balding truckers and old folks who had stopped by for a bite to eat. 

Stiles is _pretty_ sure this was the set up of date. The tables around them were all empty and he’s pretty sure the waitress, the wife, had given him the stink eye for not letting Malia get into the booth first. The husband watches them from the bar. 

* * *

 

“So, Malia, what happened between you and Scott?” Malia’s pondering between getting the burger and the double patty burger when Stiles asks the question. Scott had mentioned to her that Stiles had asked about it, but she wasn’t sure if Stiles was jealous. He shouldn't be, by any rate. He had been the one to break up with her. Still, he was acting all weird and she didn't know why.

She answers plainly. “Figured we were better off friends. He called me Kira once when we were having sex.” 

Stiles almost looks like he’s about to choke. “He missed Kira that much?”

“He went to go find the skin walkers one weekend, to see if he could see Kira. She wasn’t there.” Truth be told, she missed Kira. Kira had been a good friend and she had made Scott happier than she ever could.

Also, she started to think of Scott as a brother. He was a good friend and a good alpha, but not a good mate. She shudders at the thought of kissing him again.

Stiles doesn’t answer, but goes back to looking at the menu. “What about you and Lydia?” She asks, before adding. “Not that I’m jealous or anything.” It wasn’t that seeing Stiles and Lydia kiss was gross, but she didn’t like it. It felt like jealousy, but she wasn’t going to tell Stiles that. 

“We broke up recently.” Stiles’s answer is curt and oddly enough, Malia feels relief. Stiles didn’t seem too sad about it either.

There’s a tension between them, where there are the real questions they want answered but neither of them had the guts to ask them. There are real reasons they’re sitting in a diner on the side of road and it’s not because they’re exes with a history.

They both know what happens if they ask the question, and neither of them wanted to act on their impulse, not when they had done this dance before, not when they had played this game of Russian Roulette of with their hearts already. They knew the other, intimately, painfully, for better or for worst. But they’d also broken each other’s hearts and stomped all over them, and here they are, back to ground zero where it all began. 

* * *

 

There’s an interlude of three days worth of awkward glances and dancing around what they want to do instead of weighing what they should do. 

Stiles wants to breathe again, and the only way he knows how to do that is through Malia. She moves elegantly, beautifully, and there’s nothing more he wants to do than kiss her, to sweep her up and kiss her like she’s his everything. 

Malia tries to figure her feelings out. Stiles is, and was, her first love, the mate she wants to run back to comfort. In some ways, she craves him, the way she had never wanted something more in her life. He’s the fruit of temptation, the road she can’t go back from if she goes down it. 

(And for both them, it was entirely worth it, their brains the damned. The heart wanted love, the heart wanted company, and that was what it got.)

* * *

 

Stiles has the radio on in the apartment when Malia comes in. It’s playing some early 2000s song, something about an ex girlfriend, when it changes. 

He’s in the kitchen when Malia asks him to dance. The song playing had a slow tempo, steady beat, and in the living room of his apartment, Malia Tate asked him to dance. 

They move in sync, his hands on her shoulder and back as they sway to the music. They’re standing too close to each other, and she’s leaning onto him and he’s leaning onto her, and it feels like absolution. It feels like coming home. It feels like they’re finally together again, that they’re finally whole, that they’ve found the person they want to come back to until the day death does them apart. 

“Stiles?” Malia asks quietly, reverently, as if this was a holy moment she didn’t want to disturb.

“Yeah?” He almost whispers back, because it sounds like the music has changed but here they were, slow dancing to their own beat. They’re swaying, holding onto dear life as if they didn't want to let go, not now, not ever. 

“I miss this,” Malia confesses. Her forehead and his were touching, and all while she’s saying this, he has the irresistible urge to kiss her. He misses this too, this intimacy, this moment he wants to hold onto forever, because it feels like everything makes sense right now.

“I know. I miss it too,” and that’s the truth of it. That’s the crux of it, that’s the gist of it. True love, above all, waited. It was patient, an everlasting thread that made everything else seem insignificant in comparison. It was waking up and realizing that you were in love with someone so deeply that just by being in their presence everything felt right. It was the passing of time strengthening romantic feelings and weakening the inhibitions of the brain and it was the heart screaming for the attention of the one it craved so badly it bled. 

And here they were, in perfect harmony, dancing to song that was long over. He kisses her, slowly and deeply, and she kisses back, gentle, hesitant. They’re not usually like this, no. She’s the straight talking werecoyote and he’s the one that makes the sarcastic comments. They both have their emotional baggage, but they didn't matter right now. They were Stiles Stilinski and Malia Tate, best friends, lovers and companions. 

Neither of them tell the other they love each other because they know the other loves them. Deeply, passionately, theirs had been a love that had never ended. They had dated other people, they had broken their hearts in the process, but they had never forgotten what the other had felt like. They had never forgotten their feelings to one another, not even when their relationship had been tense. 

The dance doesn’t end, not for them. 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2017 Stalia Secret Santa Gift Exchange! Posting it early since I won't be on for the actual posting date.
> 
> As always, my tumblr is chochang.


End file.
